The Elf From Misty Valley
by Zidana123
Summary: After her encounter with the Black Swordsman, Rosine is left alone and savaged. Is she ready to leave her childhood dreams behind and find a new place for herself in the world?     It is a fairy tale. Yes. A fairy tale for little children.
1. Prologue: Elf in the Orchard

Prologue - Elf in the Orchard

Caedon was just settling down to his morning bowl of porridge when his youngest son, Deiter, came tearing into the cottage, slamming open the door with a loud BANG! Across the room, Edelene, his wife, jumped in surprise at the sound, nearly dropping the clay pitcher of water she was bringing to the table.

Caedon barely had time to rise from his chair before Deiter was upon him, grabbing at his hand and practically dancing in excitement. "Father! Father! Come see! Come see!"

Caedon took his son's hand. The boy's digits clapsed around two of his large, callused fingers, roughened from a lifetime of working on the trees. "What is it, son? And you should open the door slowly. You gave your mother a terrible fright."

Deiter looked to his mother, mumbling a quick "sorry, mother," before turning back to Caedon. "You've got to see this, Father! It's incredible! There's an elf out in the apple trees!"

Chuckling a bit at his son's imagination, Caedon shook his head. "An elf, you say? Strange folk, the stories say. No bigger than your hand. What say we have some breakfast together, and then we can go out and have a look?"

Deiter's brow wrinkled. "No, Father, it's bigger than a hand! It's bigger than I am! And..." He suddenly looked serious, the excitement of a moment ago fading from his face. "I think it's hurt."

Caedon trotted after Deiter's fleeting form down the rows of apple trees, the morning sun just slightly above the horizon. He'd made his son wait just long enough to put on his overcoat, and the delay had only fueled the boy's impatience. This late in the season, mornings were quite chilly. The apple crop had been long harvested, and the trees stood bare, unadorned by neither fruit nor foliage. The earth gave off a rich smell, and he inhaled deeply of the crisp cool air.

The first thing Caedon saw was not the elf. It was the shattered remains of several apple trees, their trunks splintered and broken, a few still connected by strips of bark to their roots, but others simply snapped off. As his dismayed eyes swept over the damage, calculating the cost of the slain trees, he noticed a furrow plowed into the dirt beyond, and a pale crumpled shape at the end of the furrow. Whatever it was, it had clearly fallen out of the sky, smashed up a few of his trees, and slid along the ground for several feet before finally coming to rest.

He broke into a jog, finally moved to exertion. As he approached the crumpled shape, a chill went down his spine as he realized what he was looking at.

There, at the end of the furrow, in a shallow pool of blood and covered with dirt, lay the body of an unconscious young girl. A decidedly inhuman girl, judging from the huge pair of butterfly wings that sprouted from her head and back, in place of hair. More importantly than that, however, the girl's naked body was covered with horrific injuries. Her abdomen was slashed open, gaping with not one, but two ugly wounds. The upper wound was a straight-edged gash, clearly made with a sword or a knife blade. The lower one was jagged, the flesh hanging open like some kind of twisted flower, its edges burnt and blackened. Above her abdomen, the left side of her torso was simply missing: it looked like someone had taken a saw to her side, slicing away shoulder and arm and huge slabs of flesh; Caedon could see the white nubs of her ribs, as well as the remains of the shoulder blade, just below the surface of the wound.

Miraculously, almost obscenely, the girl still lived. Her skin was ashen pale, and he could hear the blood bubbling in her chest through the hole in her side with each labored, raspy breath. He was filled with a tidal wave of pity and horror... and strangely, a spike of gut-curdling fear, deep in his bones, a fear that he'd never felt before in his 43 years of life... fear of the girl? There was no way a human could survive injuries like this... what kind of monster must this girl be, to have such unnatural resilience? He felt a sudden urge to run, and following that, a blast of guilt, smothering the fear. How could he be afraid of a child, hurt so badly, even if it wasn't human? He began to take off his overcoat to wrap around the elf girl's nude form.

"Father? What are we going to do?" Deiter asked worriedly.

Caedon gathered the elf girl's still body into his arms, her huge wings draping over his arms and dangling to the ground. "Let's take her back to the house." 


	2. Chapter 1: Elf in the Interstice

Chapter One - Elf in the Interstice

Rosine's mind floated through a sea of wavering dreams and thoughts, sinking down ever deeper. She knew where she was, of course. The knowledge had come to her upon her rebirth, just as it had come to all her kind in their turn.

She was in the astral world.

All of her kind existed partially within the physical world and the astral world at the same time. As with all astral beings, their existance ran in cycles, tied to the moon: As the moon became full, they moved further into the waking world. As it waxed, they too faded, and on the few nights of the month where there was no moon, they sank completely back into the darkness of the Interstice where they had been reborn into their new existance.

This knowledge didn't fit with Rosine's current circumstances though. At the time of the month when her kind slept, this shallow layer of the Interstice would be full with their presence: quiet gossip passed from mind to mind, jubilent greetings among friends, hostile taunts and challenges among enemies, and the loud, raucous boasts of the prideful, all resonating through the sea of dreams.

The only things Rosine could pick up around her, however, were vague mutterings and the briefest flashes of thought... the others were clearly in the physical phase of their cycle, so why was she here, alone?

As she sank deeper, she became more aware of her own astral form. Although she had no eyes with which to see in this state, she realized, with a shock, that she was injured. The eddies of energy that were her astral body churned madly, fragments of her own being spilling out slowly into the void.

With the realization of her injuries came the memories. The aborted attack on her foster village, the Black Swordsman tracking her somehow to Misty Valley, her attendant elves burning away in the inferno, and the cruel bite of the Swordsman's blade, the terrible, terrible pain as it cleaved through her living flesh...

Here in the interstice, there was no need for words. Beings touched mind to mind and spoke with thoughts alone, and her turbulent memories-and the pain they invoked-were enough to draw the attention of several of the denizens of this deeper layer. They swarmed around her, small minds all, barely self-aware, but nasty and inquisitive.

[Hungry]  
>[PainIts pain]  
>[Fear! Fear!]<br>[Pain/Fear/Food?]  
>[Food! Food!]<br>[What is it what is it what is it?]  
>[Apostle?Apostle./Apostle!]

The cloud of small minds buzzed uncertainly, panic spreading through their ranks as they realized what she was. They were far weaker than her, or at least, they should have been, if she wasn't injured.

One of the minds advanced slowly, cautiously. Sharper than the rest, Rosine felt it probe at the edges of her conciousness, before it broadcast a ripple of satisfaction and triumph through the void: [Injured!]

The other small minds closed in eagerly, yammering away in short, truncated thoughts.

[Injured!]  
>[Weak!]<br>[Injured/Weak!]  
>[Hungry]<br>[Its pain/Its fear!]  
>[Feed]<br>[Feedfeedfeedfeed]

[NO! GO AWAY!] Rosine ordered, the strength of her command as an Apostle enough to drive a few of the smaller weaker creatures away-but not nearly enough, as the rest of the swarm descended upon her.

The creatures glommed onto her astral form, and Rosine screamed as she felt her mind distorting under their presence. Small sharp fingers of thought wriggled their way into her, tugging and seeking for the memories-the memories-!

-The tidal wave of despair that washed over her as she watched the black towering figure of the Swordsman standing amidst the flames, a shadow in their twisting crimson heart, as all around him her attendants burned, years of her efforts gone to waste-

-The crushing pain in her innards like a hammerstrike, whatever enchantment the Swordsman had fired from his hand ripping through her organs, her stunned incomprehsion as she struggled to make sense of events, how her victory could have come to this even as the ground reached out to meet her-

-The brief flash of triumph sucked away too soon, turned to sour, blood-curdling terror in those few seconds, long as years, as the Swordsman's silhouette rotated, firelight revealing her lance buried in his cheeks instead of through his skull, as she had thought, the moonlight shivering along the blade of his weapon as it swung towards her, its terrible bite, and the pain pain pain pain-

The ravenous things seized her memories eagerly, bloating on her agony and despair, forcing her to relive those few moments over and over, the moments where her destiny, once so sweet, had gone so wrong.

Suddenly as it had began, the psychic assault ended. Dazed, Rosine groped with her senses for some explanation. She caught a few impressions of the psychic vampires fleeing upwards into shallower regions, trumpting pure terror as they went, but she was too dazed from the assault to make heads or tails of why they should be running. She was still sinking into the void, now deeper than she had ever gone before.

As Rosine became more collected, she became aware of something rising towards her from the depths of the abyss: a truly enormous will, it dwarfed even her considerable presence as an Apostle. Clearly, it was this which the small minds had sensed and fled from. A momentary spike of panic shot through her, before she realized that she knew this mind. She had encountered it twice before, both on occasions of great importance. Indeed, one of those occasions had changed the very course of her life.

[YOU SEEM TO BE IN DIFFICULTY.] A massive psychic voice emanated from the being. Focused and incredibly powerful, it nonetheless held a jovial, casual tone, ripe with curiosity, as if remarking on some pretty flowers or a particularly unusually-shaped fruit. [WERE THOSE INCUBI BOTHERING YOU?]

It was one of her Angels. One of her saviors, lords, masters, objects of worship, one of the beings that had come to her in her deepest despair and revealed her true destiny as Pirkaf. One of the Godhand, Ubik. Her panic and terror faded away. Surely, at last, here was someone who could help her!

[My Lord.] She began, careful to keep her tone respectful and submissive. It wouldn't do to presume on an Angel, after all. [What's wrong with me? What's going on? Why am I here in the Astral World?]

[OH, THAT.] She had the sense that Ubik was circling her, examining her from every angle. [THAT'S TO BE EXPECTED. YOU -ARE- DYING, YOU KNOW.]

[Dying?] Rosine was taken aback. The panic beginning to flutter again within her. She forced it down and forged ahead. [I... I know I lost the fight with the Swordsman... but I was flying... And... I don't feel like I'm dying... What do you mean?]

[THERE'S NO MISTAKE!] Ubik sounded positively gleeful now. [YOU -ARE- DYING, EVEN IF YOU CAN'T TELL. YOU SEE, AN APOSTLE HAS TWO PARTS: A PHYSICAL PART AND AN ETHEREAL PART. WHEN THE PHYSICAL BODY IS INJURED INTO UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND IS MORTALLY WOUNDED, AS YOURS SEEMS TO BE, THE ETHEREAL PART COMES HERE! AND THAT'S YOU RIGHT NOW.]

Rosine was still sinking. All around her the very psychic structure of the Astral World was changing, becoming denser, and darker, her spiritual senses gradually able to perceive less and less. She tried to wet her lips with her tongue, an ingrained physical response, which only dismayed her more as she realized her astral body had no mouth.

[My Lord... what will happen to me when I do die? Will... will you take me to heaven, like the priests said?]

Ubik's response was a roar of hi-pitched laughter.

[HEEE HEEE HEEE HEEE! OH, YOU PRECIOUS CHILD! NO, OF COURSE YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HEAVEN! I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD CALL WHERE YOU'RE GOING 'HELL,' EVEN THOUGH NEITHER TERM REALLY APPLIES HERE, YOU KNOW. YOU ARE GOING... TO THIS PLACE.]

Ubik's presence reached out to touch her mind, and her senses shifted. She could suddenly perceive far far down below them, into the very depths of the Astral World. Tremendous rivers of psychic energy flowed, crushing together mercilessly in a mighty torrent, flowing back upon itself in a great vortex.

[THAT'S WHAT AWAITS -YOU-, DEAR CHILD. THAT IS THE COMMON GRAVE OF ALL BEINGS WHO ARE TOUCHED BY FATE. IN THAT TWISTING BLACKNESS, THERE ARE NO HOPES OR DREAMS, NOTHING RESEMBLING THOUGHT OR EGO. THERE IS ONLY THE DARKNESS OF THE SUFFERING OF MILLIONS OF SOULS. WHEN YOU FALL INTO THAT DARKNESS, YOU'LL BE CRUSHED AWAY LIKE A DROP OF WATER IN THE OCEAN!]

Rosine's mind shrank back from the horror, but the vision persisted. She thought she had been sinking slowly before, but now she was sinking much too fast, growing ever closer to the vortex of souls beneath her. [Why are you telling me these things?] She shrieked. How could this be? Why was her Angel tormenting her with this knowledge? Was it some kind of test, like the test she had to pass when-

[IT'S NO TEST, MY DEAR. NOT THIS TIME. I ADMIT, I'M CURIOUS.] Ubik giggled again. Through her terror, Rosine realized sickeningly that he was acting in much the same way she would, when she would hound humans intruders through the mists of her valley, to see which way they would turn in their fear. The same way she, as a human girl, would capture ants near the stream and divert water towards them with a piece of bark, to see how they ran.

[THE TRUTH IS, IT'S NOT VERY OFTEN THAT I GET TO BREAK THE NEWS TO APOSTLES LIKE THIS. APOSTLES DON'T DIE VERY OFTEN, AND WHEN THEY DO, IT'S MOSTLY BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN KILLED BY OTHER APOSTLES. IT'S USUALLY FAST. BUT EVER SINCE SLAN'S FAVORITE BOY SHOWED UP, WELL... HE LIKES TO KILL THEM SLOWLY. LIKE YOU.]

Ubik touched her again, and Rosine suddenly could see, all at once, as if she'd suddenly grown dozens of eyes, the Black Swordsman slaying Apostles. Big and small, furred and scaled, each filled with the power granted to them by the Angels and made to rule over humans, it made no matter; the Swordsman cut a swathe through them like cheese, butchering and mutilating. The lucky ones were dispatched quickly with lethal blows. Others had the ill fortune to be bisected or crippled, and these he tortured, carving their immobile flesh slowly with knives, filling them with arrows until they bristled like pincushions, burning them with torches, cutting out their tongues, and gouging out their eyes... there were so many of them, dozens upon dozens. Rosine felt sickened watching the images. If it hadn't been for Jill shielding her with her body, would the Swordsman have tortured her to death as well?

[THIS ONE HERE...] Ubik muttered, and Rosine found her attention focused on one of the images, a great furred ape-like Apostle in a forest, tall as the trees surrounding him, the shrunken body of his smaller form protruding from hulking shoulders. She watched as the Swordsman clambered over the Apostle's upper body, cutting and stabbing, until the great Apostle collapsed into a heap on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

[HE WAS THE FIRST.] Ubik mused. [WHEN I TOLD HIM OF HIS FATE, HIS FEAR OF DEATH WAS SO GREAT THAT IT WOKE HIS PHYSICAL BODY AND HE ROSE AGAIN, DESPITE HIS INJURIES. HE HAD A PLAN TO FIND ANOTHER BEHELIT AND INVOKE IT AND SO INCREASE HIS LIFE, OR SOME OTHER IDIOTIC THING LIKE THAT. IT DIDN'T WORK OUT VERY WELL FOR HIM.]

The visions ended, and Rosine was once again falling through the void. She was so deep now that the only thing she could perceive was blackness-and the horrific fate that awaited at the end of her journey.

[SINCE THEN,] Ubik continued, now bouncing with glee. [NO OTHER APOSTLE HAS BEEN ABLE TO DO WHAT HE DID. THEY ALL JUST SANK DOWN INTO THE VORTEX AND WERE CRUSHED. I'M TELLING YOU THESE THINGS BECAUSE I WANT TO SEE IF YOU CAN WAKE YOUR BODY WITH YOUR TERROR AS WELL.]

That was Rosine's cue. She was already terrified; moreso than she'd ever been in her short life. But she had no idea how to use that fear to wake up. She felt as if she was trapped in a nightmare, filled with horrible dread and terror, and yet unable to escape.

It was too much for her to take. She started to cry, screaming and wailing incoherently into the darkness. Sinking alongside, Ubik watched, giggling to himself.

[Why?] She sobbed, addressing everyone and no one, directing her questions towards Ubik and at the void around them. [I thought you were my Angels! I thought you were going to save me! Why did you save me back then and not now?]

[SAVE YOU?] Ubik howled with glee. [OH, MY DEAR PRECIOUS CHILD! WE DIDN'T -SAVE- YOU! WE TOLD YOU YOU WERE A CHILD OF DESTINY AND WE MEANT EXACTLY THAT! FATE CHOSE YOU FOR YOUR ROLE: TO ASCEND BEYOND HUMANITY AND TO BECOME AN APOSTLE OF THE GODHAND. AND PERHAPS...] Malice leaked into his tone, overshadowing the jovality. [PERHAPES FATE HAS CHOSEN YOU TO DIE NOW.]

After that there was nothing left. Rosine sobbed to herself, thrashing and kicking, trying desperately to wake from the nightmare her existance had become, but to no avail.

The vortex grew and grew beneath her, far larger, it seemed, than the world she saw in flight with her mortal eyes. It stretched on in all directions away from her, inconceiveably deep and broad and terrifying... and Rosine's soul shuddered with fear as a small tendril broke away from the vortex, rising to meet her.

[AH! THEY'VE SENT OUT A WELCOMING PARTY.] Ubik chuckled. [I GUESS I'M NO LONGER NEEDED AS A CHAPERONE. WELL, AWAY YOU GO.]

Rosine recoiled from the tendril. It was composed of souls, interlaced and clinging to one another; souls so distorted from the psychic pressures within the vortex that they were barely recognizable as once being human. The borders between their minds had blurred and merged into one another, and even this far away she could sense the misery and suffering emanating from them, as surely as she could sense the smell of blood in her physical body.

At the tip of that tendril was a single figure, and Rosine's thoughts froze as she recognized it.

It was her mother.

Did her mother hate her that much, for what she did? Hated her so much that, even after being compressed in this river of souls for years, her mother still retained enough of herself and her hatred to make sure she was the first thing Rosine saw upon entering hell?

Ubik faded away, his presence rising towards shallower layers of the interstice, and Rosine screamed in despair as her mother's shade drew near, phantom tendrils of her thoughts brushing the very edge of her consciousness, allowing her to feel the endless torment that was to be hers forever and ever as one of the damned-

-and impossibly, miraculously, Rosine found herself rising, rising away from her mother's ghost, from the vortex, from the sinuous straining serpentine string of souls, up, up towards the world of the living.

She gained speed as she rose through the darkness, the structure of the astral world changing again, growing less dense, brighter and lighter, and above her, the vast consciousness of Ubik came into range once again.

He turned to face her as she rose past him, and Rosine had the impression that the powerful being was gaping in confusion at her progress away from the depths. She could feel his perception focusing on her, razor sharp, peering at her, into her, and then finally through her, dragging her mind along as he burrowed a hole through reality.

She saw, filtered through Ubik's consciousness, two figures, one big, one small, walking through denuded trees. The larger figure-a man-held some crumpled shape in his arms, and with a shock, she realized that she was looking at herself, cradled in the man's arms.

The scene blurred, and now she was looking at a the same man indoors, with a woman, and her own torn body lying on a bed. The boy was gone now, and the woman was wrapping linen cloths around her wounds, binding them and stopping her bleeding.

And then she was back in the interstice again, still ascending, detached from Ubik's mind. She soared upwards, leaving him behind in the gloom, now rocketing up faster, faster, almost as if she had wings once again. Behind and below her, she could hear the Godhand's muttering.

[NOT WHAT I EXPECTED... NOT WHAT I EXPECTED AT ALL... BUT INTERESTING! SO VERY INTERESTING! HEEE HEEE HEEE HEEE!]

It was bright now, almost blindingly so. She was flying along a tunnel of white light, faster and faster, even faster than she had ever flown through the skies-

-Rosine opened her eyes, an unfamiliar timbered ceiling above her.

Everything hurt. All of her, from her toes up to her antennae, and it was a chore just to keep her eyes open. She sucked in a breath, an explosion of agony radiating through her torso-but at the same time it was the sweetest breath she'd ever taken. She was alive! Alive!

There was a gasp from close to her left, and her eyes slid over to see a boy child, who'd also sucked in a breath. Big blue eyes goggled wide in a round pale face, beneath a cap of light brown hair.

"You're awake!" The boy crowed, much too close to Rosine's ear and much, much too loudly for Rosine's liking. "Are you okay? What's your name? What are you?"

"I'll live." Rosine said. Her voice was a papery whisper, but as she said the words she could hear the truth in them. She was alive! And she was going make sure she stayed that way! "I'm..."

She paused. What was she? Not Elf, no. And not Pirkaf. Somehow, now that she'd seen the creature that Jill had found, she couldn't bear the thought of lying about what she was anymore, to herself or to anyone else.

"I'm Rosine." She said. "I'm an Apostle." 


End file.
